A Time of Need
by HappyAbby
Summary: Carter is in the Congo, and he's missing Abby and struggling with guilt over sending her the break-up letter. Late one night, he decides to give her a call...CARBY


She came to him at night, as she always did...Abby, dressed in powder blue scrubs, moving and shaking through a crowded ER, all five feet and one inch of her exuding confidence, competence, and authority. Abby, dressed in a pink satin gown, his hands skimming over her silken skin as he gently coaxed her around a dance floor in time with the music. Abby, tangled in bed sheets, singing a ridiculous seventies tune off-key in her low, husky voice before he silenced her with kisses. Abby, wearing nothing but a smile, her tanned arms and legs slicing through the waters of Lake Michigan. And then Carter awoke, sweating, and wishing that he could stop dreaming of her, because it made him ache to wake up without being able to touch her. Usually, the visions of her in his mind's eye made the ache worthwhile, but tonight he just couldn't shake it. He felt weighed down, too, by the heavy force of guilt. Guilt over sending her that stupid letter. That cowardly letter written at a weak moment, when he wanted to simplify everything in his life, shrug off anything difficult, anything that required an emotional investment. He struggled with the mosquito netting around his bed, hands desperately swatting at the net until he found it's opening. He stepped outside, oblivious to the heat and the bugs that plagued him even now, at three in the morning. He fumbled for his slippers and shuffled through the cabin as if in a trance. He flipped a light switch and a naked bulb illuminated his path, and then he reached his destination: the telephone. He dialed the number that had been burned into his brain for the past three years. She answered breathlessly.   
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Abby, it's me...it's John..." A shot of electricity jolted through Abby's body. She hadn't spoken to him, hadn't heard from him in ages. Only that letter, that painful letter that had made it's way around the ER and into her hands months ago. She decided to take the high road, play it cool, play it pleasant. Politeness is a virtue, she reminded herself, and took a deep breath.   
  
"Oh, I'm glad I caught you...or I guess that you caught me. I just walked in the door...a minute earlier and you would have missed me."  
  
"Evening shift?" he asked, barely audible above the roaring static of the international phone call.   
  
"Yeah, it's about...oh, right around nine at night here, so that makes it...what time for you?"  
  
"Three."  
  
"In the afternoon?"  
  
"Morning. I...just can't sleep. " Immediately Abby's inner alarm went off. A hundred letters could not keep her from caring about him, from being concerned.   
  
"What's wrong?"  
  
"I've been thinking a lot about you..."  
  
"I can't hear you, John...you're breaking up..." The static made it increasingly difficult to hear him speaking. Little did she know that it wasn't just static that was causing the distortion. Carter was shaking with the force of trying to hold back pent-up sobs.  
  
"I miss you...I can't...I don't know if I want to be here anymore."  
  
"Well, we need you here, John. There are plenty of lives to save right here at County."  
  
"I'm stuck, Abby. I don't know where I belong. I don't want to stay here, and I don't want to come home. There's..." Carter gulped deep breaths, trying to compose himself. "There's nothing...nobody for me in Chicago. Gamma's gone. And I'm sure I've driven you off, with that stupid letter..." The line crackled. Abby drew in a breath. So finally, after months of silence, this was going to be laid out on the table.   
  
"It hurt me, John. I can't lie about that. It hurt. But that doesn't mean that I don't care about you. That doesn't mean that I don't want to see you back here in Chicago. We'll always be friends, you have to know that..."  
  
"I can't come back to Chicago, Abby. I can't come home, not if friendship is all you have to offer me. I've ruined everything for us. I don't blame you at all for wanting to distance yourself from me, but you have to know that when I wrote that letter...I wasn't thinking, okay? I wasn't myself when I wrote that letter. And then I was too scared to deal with the repercussions. Too scared to call you and talk it out and make things right. It just seemed so...complicated. But you have to know that I love you Abby. I've never stopped loving you."  
  
Abby sucked in a breath, trying to figure out what to say, when the line went dead. She yelled his name into the phone several times, clicked the button on the receiver frantically, all to no avail. He was gone. Again.   
  
Numbly, Abby sat in front of the TV with a microwave dinner. The images on the screen didn't register with her...her mind was occupied with Carter. She smoked a cigarette on the front steps of her building and thought of Carter. She came inside, brushed her teeth, got into her pajamas, and thought of Carter. She laid in bed, flipping through a novel, black ink swimming on the white pages, reading and rereading the same paragraph without it ever sinking into her consciousness, because still she thought of Carter. When she finally awoke from a restless, dreamless sleep to a shrill alarm, the first thing on her mind was Carter. There had been desperation in his voice. He was lost. Abby thought back to a recent conversation with Luka, remembered Luka telling her that Carter had found himself in Africa. Carter had fooled Luka, he had fooled himself, and he had fooled her with his letter, but there was no disguising the anguish in his voice during that phone call. He was drowning, and Abby wondered how in the world she was going to reach across thousands of miles of land and oceans to pull him up.   
  
~ Five Days Later ~  
  
The sound of a car pulling up to the clinic jarred Carter. He hadn't been sleeping, rather just lying in discomfort. Silence surrounded him, but the noise of a thousand thoughts cluttering his mind clanged louder than an ambulance siren. He stiffly hoisted himself to his feet and made his way through the rustic cabin to stand on the front steps just outside of the doorway. The darkness offered some comfort from the oppressive heat of day, but it was still so humid and swampy that Carter was practically swimming through the night air.   
  
  
  
The bright headlights of a jeep glared at him, and he squinted into the night and crooked a hand over his eyes. The burst of light cutting through the heavy air created a misty, almost theatrical effect. He blinked as a figure emerged from the passenger seat and moved towards him. As the figure drew closer, Carter gasped and sank slowly to sit on the steps of the clinic, lest his legs give out underneath him from the shock. He covered his mouth with shaking hands.   
  
She moved hesitantly, slowly, toward him. Her gauzy, almost transparent white shirt and sheer linen skirt clung to her damp skin. Her long hair was gathered clumsily onto the top of her head, secured by a plastic clip. Several dark strands had fallen from the clip and had stubbornly adhered themselves to the sides of her face and nape of her neck, saturated with perspiration. She came to a standstill as she arrived in front of him and nervously pulled at the fabric of her flowing skirt. Slowly, Carter removed his hands from his mouth and rose to his feet. He opened his mouth wordlessly, still unsure if she was actually standing here before him or if she was an apparition, a hallucination induced by lack of sleep. The mystery was solved when Abby spoke.   
  
"I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop by, see how you were doing," she murmured in her throaty voice. Her dark eyes shifted to the side as she waited, uncomfortably, for a response.   
  
"Neighborhood?" was all Carter could muster.   
  
"Yeah, you know, Kinasha? It's just up the road from here," she joked feebly. Carter smiled. It was so typical of her to turn to lame attempts at humor when she was ill at ease.   
  
"When did you get here?" he asked, still marveling from the fact that she was standing here, flesh and blood, in front of him, shifting her weight from one sandaled foot to the other. It was surreal to see her here, out of place, out of the brisk wind of Chicago and into the still, unmoving heat of the Congo.   
  
"Just now, actually. I had a contact number for Medecins Sans Frontieres, and I arranged for them to come and pick me up from the airport and, uh, bring me to you," she answered, still ducking her head, shifting her eyes, to avoid meeting his gaze. It was too intense, and Abby wondered if she had made an enormous mistake by coming here. An enormous, expensive mistake. It almost seemed...unfair? selfish, even?...to basically arrive on his doorstep here in Africa without warning. Of course he would feel obligated to take care of her, shelter her while she was here, and that was absolutely not her intention. It was the complete opposite, in fact. She had come to take care of him. Through the static of that brief phone call, she had heard pure desperation in his voice. It was different from any tone she had ever heard from Carter, and she wanted to be there in his time of need. God knows that he was long overdue.   
  
"Why did you come?" he whispered. A familiar question. She gave the answer that she had given before to others...the pure and simple, absolute truth.   
  
"Because you needed me."  
  
He was overcome. Here stood Abby before him, her petite frame trembling but unmovable, a living illustration of all that she was. Abby, who wasn't afraid of anything, not a road trip to a dirty Oklahoma motel, or bursting onto a restricted Air Force base to demand some answers, or making a 23-hour flight to the war torn Congo. She couldn't be afraid, not when there was someone to save. Someone that she loved. Abby, who made it a habit to show up whenever and wherever she was needed. Beautiful, smart, strong, crazy Abby. One step was all it took for him to reach her, to grab her and hold her close. She was solid, real. He pulled her into him, crushing his mouth against hers in a passionate kiss. Carter stroked Abby's face, entwined his fingers into her damp hair, and deepened their kiss. If she wasn't afraid to come to him, to this beautiful, terrible place, then he wasn't going to be afraid of loving her. He wasn't going to be afraid of her alcoholism, or her family troubles, or her enigmatic silences when she didn't feel like opening up to him. He wasn't going to be afraid of her stubbornness or her independence or her pride. Carter laid his head onto hers with a sigh. He softly kissed her hair and whispered,  
  
"Thank you for coming here. Thank you for finding me." Abby tilted her head up. A smile spread across her face and her dark eyes danced as she responded,   
  
"I'd never been to Africa before." 


End file.
